Put a fraction of that in wind, solar, or forced geothermal, and you’d get a real benefit. But the fossil fuel industry demands a fig leaf to cover its naked greed, so here we are.
We are allergic to exploiting great solutions that already exist. Everyone wants to be “disruptive”.
It reminds me of the investment that went into hyperloop stuff when our current best transit solutions aren’t anywhere close to full saturation in the US. Similarly our current best green technologies are far from being fully exploited.
Also, part of the issue is real green technology requires some people to change their business and/or lose some profits. If we do carbon capture or other things, that creates a product to sell. It’s a bullshit product that is worse than other options, but if they can it’s easier for politicians to sell this to donors than something that’ll hurt a very rich industry. Syphon money from taxpayers to make sure the rich dirty energy companies can keep making huge profits and give the tax money to some other rich people to clean up the thing the other guys are doing.
US laundering stolen taxpayer money into “eco” contracts thanks to nepotism and buying off politicians
I don’t think that is wrong to subsidize research of new potential technologies that will help is control our carbon output… as long as we are also rapidly moving towards renewable energy.
Obviously most research runs into dead ends, but that doesn’t mean we should stop trying new things.
“US Burns Last Bridge At Behest of Corporations”
Latest*
It’s not even a particularly bad one, compared to Dole coups, Coca Cola assassination, and Uniroyal napalming civilians.
There are no other bridges after the climate is fucked. This is the End of the Line.
Wasting money on bad solutions is not the same as fucking it up completely.
Also, I don’t know if you’re being unrealistically optimistic or unrealistically pessimistic, but there are still deeper depths to sink to than just fucking up the climate. That still has a whole range from reducing the carrying capacity of the earth to 5 billion or to 5 million or 5 thousand or zero, and there are more or less horrifying ways to handle that drop too.